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British P.M. Faces No Confidence Vote Amid Brexit Turmoil; Soon: Former Trump Attorney Michael Cohen to Be Sentenced in New York. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 12, 2018 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[05:59:20] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Wednesday 6 a.m. here in New York, and we do have some major breaking news to tell you about. This is with one of America's closest allies.

A possible government shake-up in the U.K. where just hours from now Prime Minister Theresa May face as no-confidence vote, meaning that her days as prime minister could be numbered. This has all of Europe as well as investors here in the U.S. on edge. So we will go live to 10 Downing Street in just moments.

Also happening this morning, President Trump's former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, will learn his fate. He will be sentenced for eight counts, including that campaign finance violation that ties a federal crime directly to the president.

The president is dismissing all of this in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters. He says it's hard to impeach someone who has not done anything wrong. As for his 16 close associates who had contact with Russians during the 2016 campaign and transition, Mr. Trump calls it "peanut stuff."

So one of the persons Trump is calling a peanut is his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Overnight, Flynn's lawyers asked a federal judge to spare him from prison, saying he cooperated with investigators. They also revealed some new details about his cooperation.

And while we are in the middle of the 12 days of Russia, the government has other problems, namely a looming government shutdown. The sticking point is the president's demand for funding to build a border wall.

This morning the Capitol still reeling from the fallout of what Nancy Pelosi called "the tinkle contest" between the president and congressional leaders, this televised fight where the president was confronted on his incorrect statements and where he made this politically charged proclamation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck. Because the people of this country don't want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle, I will be the one to shut it down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We have a lot to talk about. We're going to start with the developments coming up in the Russia investigation.

Joining us now, Garrett Graff, Joe Lockhart, Jennifer Rogers.

Jennifer, you are the attorney among us, and we are in the midst of what today I'm calling the 12 days of Russia. Yesterday, I called it, like, a Russian advent calendar, where you open a new thing, and someone else came out. But today it's like five guilty pleas, four turtle doves and you get it, the rest.

CAMEROTA: I like the metaphor. You're running with it.

BERMAN: I'm going all in. Tomorrow I'll have something different. It will be like stockings under the Russia tree.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

BERMAN: Michael Cohen will be sentenced today. This is a big development. This is the president's personal attorney. He is going to jail --

JENNIFER ROGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, he is.

BERMAN: -- for perhaps a pretty long time over some of the things he did, that lawyers say he did at the direction and cooperation with the president. What do you expect to see today?

ROGERS: I expect he will get time. I'm thinking three to four years, somewhere in that range. You know, he pleads -- pleaded to a wide variety of crimes, the campaign finance one that you mentioned with the president, and then tax fraud and bank fraud and other things. So there are serious crimes. But remember, it's not nearly what he could have faced, apparently, if he had cooperated fully. The fact that he didn't means that he won't get the full benefit of that cooperation. So I'm thinking the three to four-year range when he sees the judge later today.

CAMEROTA: Still, though, I mean, it's really hard, I find, not to feel for Michael Cohen. He -- his original crime was undying loyalty to Donald Trump.

And so yes, he has tax evasion and the other stuff, which I think is the predominant reason that he's going to jail for so long. However, he -- he has expressed to friends -- and we know this from different media reports -- that he's going -- he can't get -- quite get his head around that he is going to prison for three to four years, probably away from his young children and wife and that somehow the person who he gave his undying loyalty to is unscathed.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, let me make it a little easier to dislike him.

He was a central part of a corrupt organization. Bank fraud, tax fraud, these are things that -- you know, we all pay higher taxes, because there are people like Michael Cohen in the service of Donald Trump who don't pay their taxes. So it's a very serious thing.

I think you can have some sympathy, though, that you know, he was devoted to this man who is corrupt, and he was cut loose. I mean, it's hard to keep track of how many ways Trump has described him. "My personal lawyer," "I don't know him." "He barely worked for me. He wasn't involved with any of the bid deals," to yesterday saying, "Well, a good lawyer actually put this together. I didn't know anything about it."

You know, so you can have some personal sympathy, but he committed crimes he should do prison time for. It's that simple.

BERMAN: So Garrett, one of the crimes he pleaded guilty to was lying to Congress about contacts that he had with Russians about building a Trump Tower in Moscow, contacts that went well into the 2016 presidential campaign and that were with people connected to the Kremlin.

So the president was interviewed by Reuters overnight and had some really interesting quotes. He was confronted with the fact that there are 16 people close to the president now that we count that did have some kind of contact with Russia. Sixteen people. And the president told Reuters, "This is peanut stuff."

Does it looks like peanut stuff to you?

GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, let's remember where we stand this morning. That the -- of the leadership of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the campaign chairman has pleaded guilty and been found guilty at trial for a wide variety of crimes, including conspiracy against the United States, and working as an unregistered foreign agent of a foreign government during the course of his time as the campaign. Ditto for the deputy campaign chairman.

[06:05:05] The national security adviser during the campaign and at the White House has similarly pleaded guilty to crimes that include being an unregistered foreign agent for the government of Turkey during the time that he was working on the campaign.

And now we have the president's own lawyer pleading guilty to crimes and directly implicating him. This is where I think I want to take a little bit of an issue with something Alisyn said quickly, which is the president is getting away unscathed.

Michael Cohen has actually landed the only two court-filing punches on Donald Trump. He has said in both of his plea agreements that his felonies were at the direction of and in the aid of Individual One, Donald Trump himself, that Donald Trump was aware of these lies, that he was aware of these conspiracies and that he was, according to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, intimately involved in the campaign finance violations.

And I think that there is no doubt in the mind of anyone who knows the federal justice system looking at these court filings this morning that, if Donald Trump was not president of the United States, he would at least have received a target letter, telling him that the federal government is investigating him for a felony.

CAMEROTA: Well, Garrett, you're right. I mean, I was trying to characterize, I think, how Michael Cohen is feeling, that he's taking the fall.

GRAFF: Yes.

CAMEROTA: But, again, what you're talking about, that's for the hush- money payments, OK, to the women who alleged affairs with the president. In terms of all the Russia of ties that you've spelled out so well, none of them link directly to President Trump, which is why I think he is able to say to Reuters --

BERMAN: I will say on the Michael Cohen thing, in the Michael -- in the plea deal on contacts with Russia, Mr. Cohen says he did it to aid the President Trump and make his statements in line with what the president did. So that's the connection --

CAMEROTA: To help him win, but not directed by the president.

BERMAN: It did not use the language "directed by."

CAMEROTA: I rest my case.

BERMAN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Here's what -- why I think the president, then, can say this: "It's hard to impeach somebody who has done -- who hasn't done anything wrong and who's created the greatest economy in the history of our country. I'm not concerned, no. I think people would revolt if that happened."

ROGERS: Yes. I mean, look, he said different things. Right? It never happened. If it happened, it wasn't illegal, and if it was illegal, it should only be a civil matter.

CAMEROTA: So that's the hush -- again, that's different. I mean, that's the hush money that Michael Cohen says he directed, the president directed; and he may be held responsible for campaign finance violations. But all of the other lying to Russia, meeting with an ambassador, trying to get to the Kremlin, it's possible Donald Trump didn't direct any of that?

ROGERS: It is possible. But remember, again, the timeline of what he said. It's the same thing. There were no contacts. There were no communications between my campaign and Russia, nothing. Now there are tons of contacts, right?

"We didn't have any dealings with Russia. There were now business deals with Russia." No we know that there was. So it's the same kind of trickle of moving the goal post, moving the story.

So you know, I think we need to see where we go, but I would be shocked if we don't find that there is some "there" there when it comes to these Russia contacts, too.

BERMAN: And you brought up the impeachment line.

Go ahead, Garrett.

GRAFF: I think it's important to remember that there is a consistency between these two cases, as well, that what you have are a criminal conspiracy around the criminal -- the campaign finance violations and a criminal conspiracy around Russia's attempts to aid the election of Donald Trump.

Both are consistent in that they are aimed at cheating the American people and trying to undermine American democracy in the American electoral system by being nontransparent about what's happening, who's funding what, and where information is flowing from.

And I think it is important to understand that Michael Cohen is a connecter between column A and column B. He was the central figure in the campaign finance conspiracy and was in, we now know from his plea agreement, as part of the Trump Tower Moscow project, in direct contact with the office of Vladimir Putin during a time when Vladimir Putin was ordering military intelligence units to help elect Donald Trump. That -- that seems to me like not the end of the story yet.

BERMAN: And of course, we still don't know, was Donald Trump told about the contacts with WikiLeaks that Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi were trying to make. Was then-candidate Trump told by his son that he was about to meet with Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton? These are things that are being investigated.

Alisyn brought up this impeachment line from the president to Reuters overnight. In this interview, she has a lot of little nuggets in there. But among other things, he says, "How can you impeach me if I did nothing wrong?"

Impeachment to me, Joe, seems like a giant straw man. Seems like this giant straw man right now that President Trump is bringing up more than the Democrats.

The media brings it up. We asked the question, because we have to ask the question, because there are now legitimate things to ask about if you're an unindicted co-conspirator, essentially. But Democrats don't want to focus on this as much as President Trump.

[06:10:11] LOCKHART: Yes, I think Democrats -- I think people have looked at this the wrong way. They look at it as impeachment as the Democrats going after the president politically. Democrats, I think, are worried that they're abdicating their

responsibility, that here we have a potential criminal in the White House, and we can't leave -- we can't just leave that alone.

Politically -- purely politically, for the Democrats, the best thing would be to let Donald Trump die a cut by 1,000 cuts, and go and sit on the ballot in 2020 and bring himself and the Republicans around him down with him.

It is very risky and there's actually some benefit. I know a little bit about this, of surviving an impeachment process and saying, "Look, that clears me. I'm OK, and I -- you come out of that with some momentum."

So Democrats, at the minimum, are going to continue to keep this quiet, I think, and wait until the Mueller report. It goes to what I think we're all saying this morning, is we don't have a complete picture yet of collusion. Mueller could come out with a report that changes everything overnight, and not necessarily what Democrats do, what Republicans do. If they feel like Donald Trump is going to pull down their party, you may finely see some accountability for him

CAMEROTA: Well, we haven't seen -- I wouldn't say that Senator Orrin Hatch has been a beacon of that momentum that you're talking about. I mean --

LOCKHART: I don't know that it's there yet. We're going to have to wait and see what's in the report, but ultimately, Democrats in 1998 made a political decision that it was in their interest to defend President Clinton.

Republicans will -- are making the political decision that it's better for them to stick with Trump and not fracture the party. We'll have to wait and see what Mueller has, and then they'll all face that decision.

CAMEROTA: Thank you all very much. We will see what happens today.

Now we have to get to this breaking news.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is vowing to fight to stay in power. The Conservative Party is triggering no-confidence vote tonight that could lead to May being forced to step down over her handling of Brexit. So we are expecting to hear from the prime minister very shortly.

But right now, let's get to CNN's Nic Robertson live at 10 Downing Street in London with all of the breaking news. I know things are happening in rapid fire now, Nic. What have you just seen?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: They are. Theresa May just left 10 Downing Street on to Parliament. She will have prime minister's question time, quite often a raucous affair where MPs in Parliament will ask her questions. Normally, it will last half an hour. It can last longer. Often tough, very cutting questions. Today, she'll have a lot of pressure. She does appear to have left a little early. Perhaps that's in part

because there are MPs there in her own party who she now needs to convince to sort of get off the fence and vote for her tonight in this secret ballot, this ballot that's been brought about by a vote -- a vote of no confidence in her.

The ballot will take place this evening in about seven hours' time. It will last for two hours. What she needs, the magic number that she needs is 158. That is a simple majority of all the conservative MPs. But as she has said, standing on the steps of Downing Street this morning, that put in jeopardy here by this test of leadership is -- is the economy and stability of Britain, that she will fight it as long as she can. This is what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THERESA MAY, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I will contest that vote with everything I've got.

The new leader wouldn't have time to renegotiate a withdrawal agreement and get the legislation of Parliament by the 29th of March, so one of their first acts would have to be extending or rescinding Article 50, delaying or even stopping Brexit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: The stakes are high for her party, for the country. If we had to guess at this time and at the moment, everybody in politics, guessing is a very dangerous thing to do.

But it does seem that, within 10 Downing Street, at least, they do think at this moment that she will win that vote.

Tonight, of course, critical: Does she win it with enough of a margin to convince Parliament, to convince her party, to convince herself that she can carry on in the job?

BERMAN: Nic Robertson at 10 Downing Street, thank you very much.

I can't express enough. This isn't crucial just for the U.K. I mean, this is the entire European order at this point that's teetering. You see the demonstrations on the streets in France. You see the upheaval in Germany. And the U.K., America's, you know, perhaps closest ally, and within a week, it could be in a new prime minister just like that.

I mean, this is really important, and you can bet investors are watching this very closely.

CAMEROTA: We're going to bring it to you live as soon as she is answering questions.

BERMAN: All right. So one of life's burning questions might soon be answered. Namely, what does it look like to be in a tinkle contest with a skunk?

[06:15:00] CAMEROTA: What does it smell like? BERMAN: Nancy Pelosi says this was it. I don't know that we have Aroma-vision, but we do have video. What's the fallout from the extraordinary Oval Office theater we saw yesterday? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Much of the U.S. government could shut down a week from Friday. Keep that in mind as you see this brief recap of the Oval Office thing that happened between the president and Democratic leaders. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY) MINORITY LEADER: One thing I think we can agree on, is we shouldn't shut down the government over a dispute. And you want to shut it down. You keep talking about it.

TRUMP: No. The last time, Chuck, you shut it down.

SCHUMER: No, no, no.

TRUMP: And then you opened it up very quickly.

SCHUMER: Twenty times. Twenty times.

TRUMP: And I don't want to do what you did.

SCHUMER: Twenty times, you have called for, "I will shut down the government if I don't get my wall." None of us have said --

TRUMP: You want to know something?

SCHUMER: You've said it.

TRUMP: All right, you want to put that on my --

SCHUMER: You said it.

TRUMP: I'll take it, OK?

SCHUMER: OK. Good.

TRUMP: You know what I'll say? Yes. If we don't get what we want, one way or the other, whether it's through you, through a military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government.

SCHUMER: OK. Fair enough.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: And those were the highbrow moments.

CAMEROTA: It got worse. Joining us, Joe Lockhart is back with us. Also with us, John Avlon; and White House correspondent Abby Phillip.

John, I want to start with you. JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

CAMEROTA: As Democrats and Republicans gather round their breakfast tables this morning, who feels better about this confrontation in the White House and the Oval Office?

[06:20:05] AVLON: No question, Democrats. You just heard the president say, thinking out loud, as he is sometimes wont to do, fine, "Fine. You want me to take the blame for shutting down? If we don't get what we want, I'll shut down the government and take the blame."

And you could basically see Chuck Schumer trying not to smile.

CAMEROTA: Oh, he was smiling.

AVLON: You know.

CAMEROTA: He turned to look at the cameras like --

AVLON: "Did you -- did you get that?" Because basically, Trump's negotiating position at this point is a guy about to light himself on fire saying, "Bring it on." This is not good for the country or the administration.

Remember, Republicans have unified control here, folks. And there's no obvious offering on here, and the deadline is December 21. And Congress is out for much of that.

Republicans have no reason to actually feel good, other than they're putting a lot of faith in the bluster of the president who doesn't actually have that strong of negotiating skills.

CAMEROTA: Well, I see it differently, Abby. I'm happy to debate all of this. I think the president has done a calculation of a -- this would be a partial shutdown next Friday. And there would be 400 federal employees who would go without pay. That's a big deal. There would be 350,000 employees who would be furloughed.

But again, I think that he is doing the math of "Is my base bigger than those people? My base likes that I'm standing my ground on the wall. This is what they voted for me on." So that's, I think, his calculation of why this might be a win for him.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think you're right, Alisyn. And -- and he's right that his base is probably with him.

Our latest CNN polling shows that the Republicans are much more interested in potentially shutting down the government over a border wall, but the problem is the politics of the situation for President Trump is not the same for this shutdown as it might have been for the last shutdown.

This time around, the Republicans are probably going to get the blame for this, because there is a solution to this problem. And also, President Trump gave Democrats a huge pass yesterday by saying, "You know what? I'm going to take credit for a shutdown if it happens, and I'm going to change my request for a border wall from what I originally wanted a few months ago to something completely different."

Not to mention that shutting down the government is not going to make it more likely that he will get his wall. There is not going to be a Republican House of Representatives come next year. So it is a bit of a political miscalculation on the president's part that he might think that just relying on his base in this moment is the best thing for him, not just in the long term but also in the near term.

In the short term, this could be a huge political problem going into the holiday season, basically sending a message to Americans that -- that there is no leadership in Washington, that people in this town are not being grown-ups.

Nobody is going to get the credit for that, and I think the president's base certainly is not large enough to protect Republicans from the political fallout in the near term and in the long term.

BERMAN: I think the issue is -- and I think you're absolutely right. This was a play to the base. But it doesn't expand his base by, like, a single vote, by a hair of a vote.

CAMEROTA: But it also doesn't shed any of the base.

BERMAN: Well, but what it does do is it gave an opportunity to who did expanded their base yesterday? Nancy Pelosi. If you're talking about expanding your support inside the House of Representatives. Because she's got a vote for speaker coming up, and she may have helped herself with this confrontation with the president right here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I also know that, you know, Nancy is in a situation where it's not easy for her to talk right now. And I understand that, and I fully understand that. We're going to have a good discussion, and we're going to see what happens.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER: Mr. President, please don't characterize --

TRUMP: But we have to have border security.

PELOSI: Mr. President, please don't characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting, as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So Joe, you know, there's reporting overnight, Politico and elsewhere, that there's a deal in place now where Nancy Pelosi will get the votes she needs to be speaker. A lot of Democrats looked at that and said, "You know what? She went in there, and she took on the president; and she looked like the grown-up." That's what they're saying I'm hearing this morning.

LOCKHART: Yes. Well, she -- she dealt a serious blow to mansplaining, first off, which we should acknowledge. I think Nancy -- I think the -- the demise of Nancy Pelosi has been

way overblown. We've talked about this over the last month or so, but she definitely helped herself yesterday.

I think the big difference between this shutdown and the last shutdown, is let's not pretend Donald Trump had a strategy yesterday. This was he got baited into this, and that's not great as a political strategy to take the bait from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

But I think he's going to be -- he'll be running and leading this charge, and there won't be a lot of Republicans running behind them. I don't think he understands the poll of Republicans wanting to just kick this down the road and go home for the holidays.

They don't want to shut down the government. McConnell doesn't. Paul Ryan doesn't. I don't think Paul Ryan wants his last act as speaker of the House is to shut down the government.

And the people who are the most upset this morning are the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate because they want to get this done.

[06:25:06] CAMEROTA: John, I've watched this entire exchange a few times, and I still can't figure out what happened. Did they -- did Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer go there to the Oval Office to meet with the president to really try to hammer out a deal or did they go to school the president that there's a new sheriff in town come January, and your misstatements won't fly any more, and your dug-in positions aren't going to fly with us?

AVLON: Alisyn, it was supposed to be infrastructure, and yet, somehow that didn't happen.

Look, this was obviously the Chuck and Nancy show, you know, being the sequel. They were all going to get together. No one was expecting the kind of bizarro world confrontation that unfolded.

CAMEROTA: Right.

AVLON: Least of all, apparently, Mike Pence, who literally was stunned into silence. Compared to an elf on a shelf yesterday and seems to have -- because the guy just, you know, useless.

BERMAN: Who's going to move him, though? Who's going to move him in the morning?

CAMEROTA: But what was he supposed to -- how was he supposed to get in there?

AVLON: I think that's happening right now, before the first -- the president has until 10 in the morning. You'll be surprised.

CAMEROTA: But I mean, he didn't want to get in the middle of that food fight. What was he supposed to do?

AVLON: Actually participate, like someone who was a responsible actor in government who once served in the House of Representatives. I don't know. I'm talking crazy talk.

Look, that was a -- look, on the one hand, I can make the case that that's the best and worst of the President Trump presidency. Because it is a moment of radical transparency. There is negotiation going on in real time. And you see that actually, some of the highest elected leaders in the world aren't playing with a full deck all the time. I suppose it's relatable.

But it also shouldn't give confidence that we're going to be able to avoid a Christmas shutdown. And you can spin it all the ways you want. It's not going to be a net positive for the government or for the people running the government.

LOCKHART: And it made it harder for those who were trying to get a deal done. It made Mitch McConnell's job 100, 1000 percent harder.

CAMEROTA: Why? Because the president said, "I'm willing to take the responsibility to go down with the --"

LOCKHART: Because the president -- no, because the president is now going to force his Republican Party in the House to put a bill on the floor that they don't want to vote on for -- and it's going to -- they wanted to quietly make this deal, you know. And you know, sometimes transparency is not the disinfectant that everyone thinks it is.

AVLON: What's the worst thing that can happen during the furlough?

LOCKHART: The worst thing that can happen during the furlough?

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: I will say this --

CAMEROTA: What's the inference?

LOCKHART: John, there are two people in America who understood that joke, and we're going to leave it at that.

BERMAN: That joke, yes. Well, we'll -- but look, I will say that Schumer -- Pelosi wanting to shut down the cameras shows you that she wanted to actually have a real discussion behind closed doors. And the president's statement yesterday morning before the meeting actually made it looks like he was willing to give something well short of what he talked about in the meeting.

CAMEROTA: This is why I didn't understand how it devolved so quickly into what we then saw. Are we wrapping?

BERMAN: Let's wrap.

CAMEROTA: OK. Thank you very much.

We have all sorts of breaking news, meanwhile. There's this massive manhunt in France. Police searching for a killer who opened fire at a Christmas market. Authorities know who they're looking for, so what we know about these details, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)